When he said he supported the strike and when he said he agreed with bush on israel my mother said "thats it i am voting for nader" .The no right to return stuck out because my friend and mentor who is viewed by mother as a strong positive influence on me is a palestinian who was born in jerusalem.And mind you my mother has volunteered withthe dems since 1968 has volunteered faithfully from Eugene McCarthy to Gore .last summer she said she liked Kerry but i swayed her to the Kucinich Campaign she was happy that kerry was chosen and called me a traitor when i went over to naders campaign.But i swear to the goddess she said i willl vote for nader after the complete and utter disregard kerry had for the palestinians.

Dem's opinion, but the right of return is a death knell to the jewish state. The palestians are getting screwed in so many ways, the right of return seems to me to be a no starter. Kerry may not be very far to the left on this one, but I had to give him points for honesty.

it will make no difference at all to the Palestinians because he endorses the same position as Bush. I have posted repeatedly that we should support Kerry based on the real differences between him and Bush (taxes, education, health care and judges), but it does get disheartening to see Kerry trying to run away from his liberal past. I don't understand why Democrats feel the need to run away from their roots - it got them nothing in 2002 and, if they repeat the mistake, I fear it will get them nothing in 2004 as well.

25. what's the difference then? Bush and Kerry will be lethal for Muslims

That's why I am voting Nader as many other Muslims are, this should send a strong message to the Democratic Party. Time to purge the Israel apologists from the party and reign in the PNAC sympathizers.

The more Kerry moves right, the closer he moves to the policies of Bush the more negativity we will se towards him, the more ammunition Nader gets in his campaign. Hopefully this negativity will result in a glimmer of sanity in the democratic camp and a resultant move back to the left ,a separation from Bush that actually gives voters a real choice!

At least qualitatively, and if one subscribes to the also overly simplistic theory that voters vote essentially on the location of the candidate on a one-dimensional left/right spectrum, there are clearly portions of that spectrum (nearer to the left-hand side) where moving to the right will pick up net additional votes for Kerry (he may lose some lefties, but will pick up more moderate-to-righties) and other portions of that spectrum where moving to the right will lose net votes for Kerry (where he'll pick up only a few more far-righties, because he's moved into the area where most of them will choose Bush anyway, but lose increasing numbers of disgusted moderates and lefties). (misplaced parenthesis edit)

Some of us are pretty sure that he's already moved to the right beyond the point where it's any net gain for him - even if Nader weren't running at all. So we view Nader's candidacy as a means to make it clear that he's got to move back to something like the real center, rather than the middle-of-the-right-lane 'center' that the DLC has been touting unsuccessfully for so long now.

But of course the situation is also more complex than that - yet another reason why continued rightward movement makes no sense given its abysmal failures over the past decade. Because standing for something is also important to voters (as long as it's something they have at least some interest in supporting, which most real centrist/progressive positions are), and the closer Kerry stands to Bush (who certainly does present himself as standing for some things that resonate with voters, mendacious as this portrayal may be), the less he looks like any real alternative.

In this issue, as with most others, Bush and Kerry are almost exactly identical. Voting for either of them reinforces, and legitimizes their position, and only makes them more likely to vote the same in the future. By rejecting the colonial zionism of the republicrats, she is increasing the chances that in the future this issue will be given a more critical view, and one party or the other will realize that they must choose a different side than the other in order gain votes. That's just how the game of politics works.

Every vote for one of the two major parties only legitimizes our current setup, an effective form of slavery, in which it is ensured long before the election that the candidate will support neocolonial, imperialistic, pro-white-rich-male issues. We're getting kicked in the balls here; you can either accept the choice between being kicked by the left foot or the right foot, or you can stand up, and say that it is wrong for you to be kicked in the balls by either foot, and at least in some way, show your contempt for this fixed system.

Conviction is more important than party. And if we want the party to support our convictions, then we have to push push push. Kerry is pandering to the squeaky wheels. Its time for the rest of us to squeak louder.

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